


if not now

by TheGoodDoctor



Category: Father Brown (2013), Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: In which it is actually harder to solve a murder with help from beyond the grave, because they already know who did it and have other priorities, anyway.Robin and the Captain compare their taste in men; Sid gives his impression of a moth; the theological implications of clouds are debated.
Relationships: Sid Carter/Inspector Sullivan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 36





	if not now

**Author's Note:**

> this very obviously inspired by this post.

Robin has not had so much fun in - well. A long while. It’s been many, many years since he was born, and not many fewer since he died, and if he is entirely honest the great majority of them have not been truly joyous. In his youth he had - he had - it has been so long he almost does not remember. There had been running, he recalls, although mostly in the interests of catching enough food to spend the following day running, too; he does not know, now, whether or not he had liked to do it. Running, these days, requires a better recollection of the boundaries of his haunt than he can be bothered to have, if he wants to avoid the frustration of slamming into the invisible walls around the estate and watching the smug, fat deer run unconcernedly into the forests beyond his reach. Besides, running does not tire him, as he remembers it once did: his feet do not ail him, nor his knees lament, and without the weariness it becomes immediately and painfully obvious that he is running rings uselessly around a land which has forgotten him, in a world which will not even bother to hurt him.

But now! Now there are people all over the place, crawling over the house like insects and creeping into every corner with their electric lights and now, _now_ , the world will remember him once more. Robin had set out to plague them mostly for something to do, but in a turn beyond even his wildest dreams the young man driving the motorcar has _noticed him._ And he wants to play.

Robin is just setting up the perfect prank - switching the headlamps of the grand lady’s car off individually, so that the car’s insides get mixed up and the young man has to spend at least half an hour wrangling them right again, all while Robin can watch gleefully and learn all sorts of interesting new words which Fanny will not like one bit - when the new one turns up. Robin has not bothered to learn his name, since the only introductions he elects to give usually involve telling Robin off for something and he usually stops listening after “See here! I’m the Captain, and-”

He assumes that the other ghosts listen to the rest of it and will eventually fill him in. One of them must know the man’s name, surely. Besides, Robin had heard Fanny name a friend once called Fortesque Cholmondley-Normstein, and had promptly given up on learning any new names at all, if they were going to be anything like that.

The new one is shouting at him already, so Robin goes back to jamming his fingers through the new bulb which the car man had installed yesterday. Robin’s curious about when he’ll snap - the car man, not the Captain. The Captain is already cross, and therefore far less interesting; Robin hopes he’ll mellow the longer he’s dead, or else he might have to live in the woodshed for a few decades. Give the man time to settle in.

“Listen to me, you grubby little man!” Robin yowls as the man hauls on his ear until they’re standing eye-to-eye. He gives his best glower, complete with unkempt, overhanging brows and intimidating wild-man hair, but he is no match; Robin shrinks under the power of this newcomer’s steely glare and shuffles his feet awkwardly, attempting to convey that he had, in fact, never attempted to challenge the Captain at all, that he hadn’t done anything wrong and if he had would never do it again, and that the Captain could therefore let his ear go, now.

“What,” he asks Robin sternly, “do you think you’re doing?”

Robin considers this. He _knows_ that he is messing about with the electrics in the car in order to encourage the young man to swear and curse at him; he _thinks_ that this is irritating the Captain as well, but he cannot fathom why. “Fanny say, people must go,” he hazards, although now that he's looking at the Captain’s unimpressed face and really thinks about it, he recalls that Fanny’s rant had been - maybe a week ago? a few days? Days happen so _quickly,_ now that the turnings of the pendant world exert no pull upon him - and it is entirely possible that one or other of the ghosts has persuaded her that there could be worse inhabitants, you know, than fine ladies and an eminently respectable priest, even if said priest _was_ unfortunately Catholic. Robin rather hopes that, if the house has moved past the guest-ejection business, it has also overcome the great schismatic divide that had kept Fanny and Thomas screeching incoherently down the stairs at the chaps in the plague pit, with whom Mary had taken up in solidarity to yell equally incomprehensible latin back, Kitty fluttering between the two groups and suggesting all sorts of make-up activities they might engage in over the next days/weeks/centuries to recover. Robin had gone outside to sit and watch the moon, and think about the good old days before Humphrey had ever attempted to explain _Jesus_ to him.

The Captain sighs deeply. “No, that campain’s off: Lady Button says they’re to stay until this whole...business is taken care of, and she’s taken a shine to that old Irish gel anyway.” The man looks a little disappointed, and Robin feels a brief pang of sympathy; one doesn’t forget those first weeks after death, uselessly seeking purpose in a world one can no longer influence, and he imagines the Captain is rather missing his objective. It’s quite a brief pang, because the Captain then gives his ear a little shake and entirely ignores his yelp. “But! Never mind! What are you doing, tampering with Carter’s car? Should have you damn well court-martialled.”

“What you care?” Robin whines, wriggling free from the other ghost’s grip and sulking over to the other side of the car. He can bank on the Captain walking around the obstacle, fresh as he is, and the distance gives him space to rub at his smarting ear and scowl properly. “Not your car.”

“Carter has other things - more important things - to be getting on with than reversing your havoc,” the Captain sniffs, rolling up onto his toes and down again officiously with his stick tucked neatly behind his back. “Besides, it could be dangerous.”

“Is only light!” Robin objects.

“And he might have an accident in the dark,” the Captain retorts.

“Is summer.”

“Will be night. _It_ will be night.”

“I never had _light_ at night.”

“You _died._ ”

Robin considers this as the Captain folds his arms and juts out his chin mulishly. The man does have a point, and so Robin shrugs in concession; it would have been an improvement, carrying about pocket sunshine with which to spot deer and cliffs and sudden, terminal bears. The Captain smiles smugly, as if it had been a much greater victory, and so Robin is compelled to prod at him again. “What so important, huh? He look at you d-”

“No, no, not at all,” he says, fluttering one hand as if swatting a troublesome fly. “That priest is a clever chap, it’ll all shake out in the end. I know a good general when I see one. No, this is about Carter and that charming policeman.”

Robin looks blankly at him, waiting for sense to arise from the dark morass like a bubble of swamp gas.

“You know,” the Captain says hopefully and entirely erroneously. “The - the handsome one. With the - the face. You know. The charming one,” he repeats. His face, Robin notes, looks as though it would quite like to crawl off his skull and hide somewhere until this conversation is over; it keeps twitching at the corners.

Obligingly, though, Robin considers the two policemen who have been crawling all over the house and making sure that everyone was in someone’s way. He compares them mentally to what he imagines the ideal man to be: strong, tall, obviously well-fed. A good hunter and provider, for the tribe and for any children that might arrive. He could see how the Captain might find him an appealing mate, and besides, there certainly was something to be said for being so pale - moonlight’s blessing, made solid and dependable flesh.

He’s not sure he’s the man for this Carter, though. Moon-man could do better.

“Him no right for Carter,” Robin pronounces, a little sadly. “Better car-man with angry policeman. Dark hair,” he adds helpfully, as the Captain is staring at him with every sign of incomprehension.

“That was who I meant, yes,” the Captain says slowly. “Who were you - the sergeant? No. He’s not - I mean - never mind. But - you’ll help me, yes? These two _have_ to be together.” The Captain pins him with a sharp-eyed look. He hasn’t been so intense about something since Kitty allowed him to explain tanks to her - again - last week, and Robin finds himself oddly motivated by it. Not enough so to follow any orders the Captain might eagerly dispense upon him, obviously, but he does take his hand subtly out of the headlamp and stops attempting to stealthily fry it without the Captain noticing. He even offers his most straight-backed posture, as additional encouragement. Robin likes mucking about with the living even more than he does with the electrics - he’s had so much more practise, after all - and he even rather likes this Carter. It could be fun.

“Excellent!” the Captain says, rubbing his hands together. “Now, all we need is a plan of attack. Oh, if only we had a map: with those little model aeroplanes and tanks, you know, and a gel to push them about with a stick.” Robin assumes, as he is often forced to do, that this will either resolve into some kind of meaning, or turn out to have been irrelevant and stupid in the end; he leans regularly towards the latter, and is rarely disappointed.

Raised voices echo outside and the door opens with some force to admit Carter and this apparently charming policeman. Robin still doesn’t see it, personally, but nor is he given much opportunity to do so either: the Captain hisses “duck and cover! Evasive action!” at him urgently, and then immediately afterwards cuts out the middleman by simply rugby-tackling him into hiding behind the car. All the breath that neither of them have is knocked from them in twin gusts, and Robin stares at the ceiling uncomprehendingly for a moment before smacking the Captain none too gently upside the head and shoving him off.

“Oi! Get down!” he shout-whispers as Robin gets to his feet, brushing dust from his furs for the look of the thing.

“They no see us. No hear us. We dead,” Robin reminds him, gesturing about and speaking at full volume. As expected, this has no impact on the argument the living men are having; if anything, they get louder.

“Well - you still struck a superior officer!” the Captain says, attempting to regain some dignity as he gets awkwardly to his feet. Robin sticks his tongue out at him and ignores the sputtering to listen to the argument instead.

“I don’t give a damn who else is as mad as you!” the inspector is saying. Robin leans carefully back to avoid a widely-flung arm through the face and peers thoughtfully at him. He supposes this might be an acceptable provider, if Moon-man were sadly unavailable. “If I catch you tampering with someone else’s electrics once more, I shall have you down at the station before you can say _boo_.”

“It’s not madness, Inspector Sullivan,” Carter says cheerfully. “Father Brown believes in ‘em too. Says he can even see ‘em, sometimes. Reckon he’s mad too, do you?”

Sullivan thinks about this for a moment, in which time Carter’s smile grows by at least an inch. “I am not here to comment on the Father’s religious beliefs,” he says at last, very diplomatically, and Carter barks an abrupt, bright laugh as he turns to the engine. “I _am_ here,” Sullivan says, drawing dignity about him like a cloak, “to catch criminals, Sid Carter, and I have bigger issues to deal with than your mischief.”

Robin watches out of the corner of his eye as the Captain inflates with pride at the importance of his favourite, and finds himself siding ever more with Sid and his mischief. “Oh, you mean the murder,” Sid says, still grinning. “Shouldn’t worry yourself. The Father’s got all that under control; should be solved within the week.”

The Captain bristles, and Robin sniggers. “Him have point.”

“No he doesn’t,” the Captain snaps back immediately, folding his hands behind his back and not looking at Robin. This is especially rich, Robin thinks, given that it had been the Captain’s point only five minutes ago.

“Oh yes?” Sullivan says snidely. “Will we be having a séance, and asking your poltergeist?”

Sid opens his eyes exaggeratedly wide. “Why, no, sir: just standard detective work. Are you not familiar with the concept down at the station?”

“You-” Sullivan cuts himself off, fists clenching and unclenching as Robin snorts - more at the Captain’s facial expressions than the words themselves. His mouth keeps twisting in irritation and it makes his moustache look like an indignant caterpillar.

The inspector sighs and turns for the door, and the smile falls from Sid’s face. “Wait - I didn’t mean - here, I’ll show you the ghost, alright? Just - wait.”

Sullivan pauses, and then turns to lean against the closed door with his arms folded. It isn’t much, but he is at least still on this side of the door. The Captain breathes out, as if he’d forgotten to do so until then. “Well?” Sullivan says, after a moment, sounding put-upon in that way people do sometimes when they want to seem aloof and are, in fact, desperate to see what happens next.

Sid beams and vaults into the driver’s seat. “He likes to fiddle with the electrics, right? He’ll break one of the bulbs, or drain the battery, or something. Right bloody pest,” he says fondly, and Robin watches as, behind Sid’s back, Sullivan’s mouth curves into something not so very far off fond either. Then he catches the Captain looking disapprovingly at him, and grins broad and smug back.

The car starts with a rumbling roar and Sid flicks the lights on. “See?” Only one of the lamps is actually making the effort to illuminate the shelves opposite.

Sullivan sighs again. “Sid, you know this hardly proves anything. Really, it only says that you haven’t done your job properly.”

Sid twists in his seat, riled. “Hey! I’m telling you, there’s a ghost! It isn’t me. Lady F doesn’t keep me on because I’m ornamental!”

Sullivan runs an eye over him - almost too quickly to be noted, but if there’s anything Robin is good at, it’s observation. He lived to be nearly thirty, after all, and you don’t get that old without spotting things which do not want to be seen. “Well, you never know,” he snaps. There’s a slight flush rising under his collar; Robin watches its progress towards his hairline with interest. “I certainly wouldn’t keep you around to maintain the order of _just one_ headlamp.”

Robin looks expectantly to Sid for his retort. He reckons that, with a little time, they’ll either punch one another’s lights out or snog each other senseless - possibly one then the other - and it should be a good show. But the Captain is looking distinctly more upset about the whole business, his plan obviously not coming off exactly as he had intended it, and Robin - feels bad. This obviously matters to him, in some way he can’t or won’t explain, and - well, he’s only just died, and it makes one feel indulgent, as one might with a small child only just born.

And so he sighs, concentrates, and jams his hand in the non-working headlamp until it flickers back into weak and feeble life.

“Oh, _jolly_ good show,” the Captain blurts out as if unable to help himself, and then presses the tips of his fingers over his lips. The two living men watch in astonishment as the light, without any input, flickers on and off.

“Good lord,” Sullivan breathes.

“Believe me now?” Sid says, also quiet. They seem oddly transfixed as Robin flickers the lamp on, and off, and on again.

“Robin, I have a Plan,” the Captain says suddenly and decisively. Robin is pleased to hear this, and yet also somewhat irritated - did they not before? and why not? - but the Plan is being relayed to him before he has the chance to express this. Obligingly, he holds the light on and off at the specified intervals as the Captain consults some internal chart which must mean more to the young men than it does to Robin: they start whispering about morse code, as if speaking too loudly might spook their spook, and taking notes.

“What we doing?” Robin asks eventually.

“Hold - and done. Talking,” the Captain says proudly, and Robin turns with renewed interest to the lights.

“What we say?” he says, peering over Sid’s shoulder.

“ _Hello_ ,” Sullivan murmurs, reverential and astonished.

Robin pivots slowly to look back at the Captain, now distinctly less impressed. “It take us _this long_ to say _hello?_ ”

“Better than nothing,” he shoots back, sticking his nose in the air.

“Um, spirit?” Sid says hesitantly after a whispered conversation. “What is, uh, thy name?”

“My name first,” Robin says quickly.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the Captain says, waving him off. “Now: hold-dot-hold-dot, dot-hold-”

“Now!” Sid says, and then Robin finds himself flat on his back on the floor. He returns to himself slowly; he hears Sid say “He hates it when I do that. But he started it, anyway, mucking about with my car.” And then Sullivan replies, something low, faintly chiding and somewhat amused, but too quiet in Robin’s ringing, staticky ears. And then there are new voices at the door, then walking, then silence.

“They switched the power off and on again,” the Captain says helpfully, after a pause.

Robin grunts. He had suspected as much.

“Still,” he says cheerfully, bouncing on his toes at the edge of Robin’s vision. “I think we’ve achieved a great deal here. Seeds of romance sown, hmm?”

Robin continues to stare up blankly at the ceiling. He’ll move when he’s good and ready, which will be when he feels less fried. Which will be some point today, he’s fairly sure. “Hmm,” he grunts. He doesn’t see the seeds, himself: they’ve proven the existence of ghosts, and both started and ended an argument, but as far as Robin is concerned the lovers have not progressed and all they’ve really gotten out of it is electrocuted.

Put like that, doesn’t it all seem so _worthwhile?_

* * *

“So this ghost of yours,” Sullivan begins, as they walk the empty corridors of the house in search of their murderer. They oughtn’t really be talking, but the Father had pointed them upstairs and himself down into the cellar in that gentle and definitive way of his, which has everyone doing as he wants: in this case, allowing Father Brown to find the murderer first and get a good denouement in before the police can get involved. Next time, Sullivan tells himself uselessly, he’ll put his foot down about it.

Sid holds up a finger. “Ghost _s_ ,” he clarifies. “Father Brown says there’s plenty of them.”

Sullivan digests this, and then deems it above his pay grade. He knows what he saw, and yet at the same time refuses to believe himself; but if he’s prepared to acknowledge the morse code ghost, he may as well accept the existence of several others. In for a penny, and all that. “Fine, ghosts. What do you think it wants? The one we spoke to.”

Sid looks at him askance, mischief in the twinkle of his eye and the curve of his mouth, and Sullivan’s heart does a quick and awkward somersault. He really has got to get that under control. “Are you suggesting that we exorcise it?” Sid says, grinning, and Sullivan feels the red rising under his collar. He is trying, he really is, to be friends with Sid - just friends, and no more - but it is so tremendously difficult when the slightest friendly teasing makes him want to tackle Sid to the ground and snog him senseless until his mouth stops doing that... _thing._ “Fulfill its final wishes and release it from the earth to live with the angels?” Sid presses his hands together, batting his eyes cherubically at the ceiling. The image is so absurd: both Sid’s choirboy lookalike attempt, and the picture which swims up in his mind’s eye of the two of them waving benignly at a golden beam of light as it ascends to heaven, and Sullivan can’t help a rather undignified snort. It’s worth it, because Sid grins in unexpected delight back at him, as if surprised to find that Sullivan might like him and his company. “Carter and Sullivan, ghost investigators,” Sid says dramatically, sweeping one arm before him for added effect.

He looks so enthusiastic about it; delighted to imagine their names and work together. Sullivan’s heart flops about again unhelpfully. “Sullivan and Carter, surely,” he manages eventually.

“Oh, fine,” Sid says, play-acting at being terribly put-upon. Sullivan ducks his head, trying to hide the smile lodged on his face, but Sid just ducks and twists even further to offer his own crooked smile in return. “See, knew you liked me really.”

There’s not really anything Sullivan can say to that, except for something that sounds worryingly like _I love you,_ and so he says nothing. He gives Sid’s shoulder a shove to get him out of his face before something ill-advised happens due to the proximity, but Sid just laughs. He does that, Sullivan has noticed: laughs, even when Sullivan is not particularly funny. Never at him; it seems to simply be that Sid - enjoys his company. Which is nice. And. Odd. But he doesn’t know how to ask why, so he’ll never bring it up. No use wondering over probably-nothing.

Sid pushes open a side door absently, glancing inside and sighing. “Oh, what’s the point. Father Brown’s probably got him by now. We all know he’s not up here.”

Sullivan straightens his spine for the look of the thing and pushes past into the room - a small study, wall-to-wall with books surrounding a heavy darkwood desk on a thick, sound-deadening carpet. It seems exceedingly unlikely that their culprit is hiding in here, but he does have a job to do. “We don’t know that, actually,” he says primly, glancing about.

Suddenly, the old lamp illuminating the windowless space flickers ominously. “Ooh, ghost!” Sid says cheerfully, following Sullivan in and standing under the desk to gaze at the lamp like a bizarre moth. It’s oddly endearing, as many things about Sid are, and Sullivan is so distracted by the planes of his face made buttery gold in the lamplight that the door slamming shut and the key turning is a complete shock. He runs to it on autopilot, shaking the doorknob uselessly just in case this has any effect whatsoever. It does not.

“What did I tell you about the suspect possibly being up here?” he says, whirling around on Sid, who is simply staring at the closed door as if he’d never seen one before.

“No - no! It must have been my ghost!” Sid says, gesturing at the flickering lamp.

“Oh, for-! I rather think we should worry less about intervention from beyond the grave and more about us joining it there!” Sullivan kicks uselessly at the heavy oak door. The idea of their murderer coming back here, having deliberately kept Sid to one side to hurt him later - his mind revolts at the concept. Sid _must_ be kept safe.

“Hey-” Sid’s touch on his elbow is very gentle, but it sends sparks shooting under Sullivan’s skin, finger to shoulder. Sid is looking at him with wide, earnest eyes and remarkable calm, and Sullivan can already feel himself breathing a little easier. Sid is here, and he is safe, and Sullivan is going to damn well keep him that way. “We’re going to be alright,” he says calmly. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

“No, I’m going to keep _you_ safe,” says a voice which sounds supiciously like Sullivan’s own, but obviously cannot have been, because Sullivan’s mouth _would never betray him like that._

But Sid grins like Sullivan’s own personal sunrise, and he is rather abruptly proud of himself and his foolish words instead. “Well, I reckon we’ll make it, then,” Sid says, gently amused, and Sullivan cannot help mirroring his slight smile. They’re standing a little too close together, and Sullivan can’t help swaying into Sid’s space a little too often. Sid tilts his head, rubbing the thumb he has absently left on Sullivan’s elbow up and down. “You’ll keep me safe, will you? Me, a bit of rough the police don’t want loafing about?”

“Of course,” Sullivan breathes. The air feels oddly charged, the dense furnishings reflecting their tension back between them tenfold; the carpet keeps them soundproofed away from the world; it is only them in this pool of Caravaggio lamplight. Everything else appears abruptly unimportant. “Of course.”

Sid smiles slowly, almost as if without noticing. And then-

“Oh, sod it,” he says, and Sid’s lips are on Sullivan’s, and he almost wants to pull back - there’s good teasing in _oh, sod it_ being the most romantic thing Sid has ever said to him - but he is wholly busy with the most romantic thing Sid has ever _done_ for him, as this is a kiss which is making his toes curl and his fingers wind into Sid’s beltloops and his mind float somewhere entirely blissful, for ever and ever.

* * *

“I say, it was a jolly good trick with the door,” the Captain says as he appears at Robin’s shoulder. He had, apparently, stuck his head through the door to check on them at one point, and then rushed off to report back to Robin and clear something nasty from his throat, but even without this, it would have been fairly obvious to Robin that something had occurred between the two. They stand a little too close together as Goodfellow hauls the culprit into the police car, watching with a self-satisfied air which can have nothing to do with the arrest they did little to bring about. Robin’s rather pleased with them, too.

But he shakes his head at the Captain. “I no do door. I nowhere near. I thought you do that.”

The Captain blinks, and frowns. He settles into parade rest at Robin’s side, gaze fixed far from the police car. “No, no, couldn’t possibly. But they said something about lights-?”

Robin shrugs again, a complex operation which shifts most of his upper body like a bag of potatoes being squeezed about the middle. “Old wiring,” he suggests.

They watch the general bustle until the crowd parts to display Lady Felicia and her niece giggling together and watching Sid and Sullivan with undisguised delight. From here, their words are unintelligible, but over their shoulders Thomas is looking decidedly curious and Fanny absolutely horrified, and so it doesn’t take a very great leap to figure it out.

The Captain sighs. “It was the Windemere girl, wasn’t it,” he says, sounding rather defeated.

Robin nudges his shoulder. “Seeds sown,” he reminds him helpfully in a poor imitation of the Captain’s own voice, and the man manages a slight smile. They watch together for a while longer, noting the way that Sullivan wanders away to speak to his sergeant but circles ever back to Sid’s side like a moon in orbit, and how their friends spare them the occasional distinctly fond glance. It’s rather pleasing; one might almost forget the murder.

Almost.

Robin nudges the Captain’s side again. “Sorry you dead,” he mumbles awkwardly.

The Captain sniffs, setting his shoulders firmly. “Well, had to happen eventually.”

Robin points over at the police car’s occupant. “Sorry he kill you,” he tries instead. He doesn’t have the words to convey that he’s sorry the Captain died here, now, and not in his bed aged a hundred and seven, or even heroically in some combat somewhere. He’s sorry it happened like this, in the house of a vague acquaintance with a penchant for interesting poisons and a deep concern that his military houseguest might stop talking about artillery for long enough to notice his host’s entirely falsified service record. He’s sorry he died here, with him and Fanny and Thomas and all the rest of them, and will have to stay for such a terribly long time.

“Yes.” The Captain sniffs, and spares one glance at the murderer in the car. “Well.” His gaze goes back to Sid and Sullivan, and Father Brown watching over them with a proud and fatherly air. “One doesn’t realise,” he begins absently, as if he’d forgotten that Robin would hear him, “what exactly one has missed out on until it’s too late, d’you see? One always thinks - oh, eventually, I’ll get to it. When I can. Haven’t the time, the space, the...you know. And then one never will.” He scratches his jaw, then twists slightly and briefly to give Robin a tight smile before swinging back out to stare into the middle distance. “Well. Never mind all that.”

“They get to it,” Robin says urgently. “They alright now. You help.”

Across the long stretch of gravel driveway, Sid stretches out his little finger and winds it into Sullivan’s secretly where their hands hang loosely together between them. The link is terribly small and ever so fragile - but it exists. It’s a start.

The driveway empties out slowly, but Robin stands by the Captain to watch them go. “I suppose I did help,” he muses. Robin frowns up at him, but even this does not remind him that, to be exact, Robin did most of the heavy lifting here. “Did something for the next generation, hmm? Yes.” He rubs his hands together and eyes the sky. “Reckon that was all I needed to do? To - you know. Move on.”

Robin squints up at the encroaching dark clouds and shakes his head. “Will rain,” he prophecies.

The Captain frowns at him, reaching out to push open the front door for them and gliding straight through it. “And that - prevents us going to heaven? Clouds?”

Robin shrugs. “No-one stay, and then go, before,” he explains.

The Captain blinks. Behind him, Kitty and Fanny start shrieking about something; Thomas then storms between them to hurl himself into the lake - again - if his beloved Bunty truly was found flirting with one of the maids and will never return anyway. Robin scratches at his furs as Mary passes in a cloud of smoke. “You mean to say,” the Captain says slowly, “that this is probably all I get for the rest of time?”

Robin looks around him, and then nods.

The Captain rolls his eyes and turns for the stairs. “Oh, good _lord_.”

**Author's Note:**

> for the curious, the Captain definitely starts spelling his own name in morse code first.


End file.
